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About Me

I am a historian and a historian of art, who is currently a Professor of History at the historically Black Howard University in Washington DC. I specialize in the history and memory of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade and am interested in the visual and material culture of slavery. My work has been funded by fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Getty Research Institute, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), and the American Philosophical Society. I am a member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples Project (former Slave Route Project), was a member of the Board of Editors of the American Historical Review (2019-2023) and among others am a member of editorial board of the British journal Slavery and Abolition. I am the author or editor of over fifteen books, including The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism (Cambridge University Press, 2023). My trade academic book Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery will be published by University of Chicago Press in October 2024.  A new revised and expanded edition of my Reparations for Slavery: A Transnational and Comparative History was published by Bloomsbury in 2023.

Recent Publications

Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery (University of Chicago Press, 2024)

 The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

 Reparations for Slavery: A Transnational and Comparative History, second expanded and revised edition (Bloombury, 2023).

Museums and Atlantic Slavery. Routledge, 2021. 144 p.

Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past.  London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. 272 p.

 

 

Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History.  London, New York: Bloomsbury, forthcoming in 2017. 288 p.

 

Romantismo tropical: Um pintor francês nos trópicos. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2017. 248 p.

 

Brazil Through French Eyes: A Nineteenth-Century Artist in the Tropics. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2015. 264 p.

 

African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2015. 428 p.

 

Shadows of the Slave Past: Memory, Heritage, and Slavery. New York: Routledge, 2014. 268 p.

 

 

Politics of Memory: Making Slavery Visible in the Public Space. New York: Routledge, 2012. 296 p.

 

 

Paths of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Interactions, Identities and Images. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2011. 476 p.

 

Crossing Memories: Slavery and African Diaspora, co-edited with Mariana P. Candido and Paul E. Lovejoy. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2011. 308 p.

 

 

Public Memory of Slavery: Victims and Perpetrators in the South Atlantic. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2010. 502 p.

 

Living History: Encountering the Memory of the Heirs of Slavery. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. 290 p.

 

Romantisme tropical: l’aventure illustrée d’un peintre français au Brésil. Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2008. 282 p.

Media Coverage

Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Le Monde, Libération, O Globo, O Público

Social Media

@araujohistorian

Country Focus

Brazil, United States, France, Republic of Benin, African diaspora

Expertise by Geography

Africa, Atlantic, Caribbean, Latin America, United States, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

18th century, 19th century, Early Modern, Modern, 20th century, 21st century

Expertise by Topic

Emancipation, Human Rights, Material Culture, Museums, Public History, Race, Slavery